Bitcoin Hits $6,700; Search for Stable Coins Continues

A week after suffering a drop below $6,000, Bitcoin is again in the green zone and trading around $6,700, fueled by a predominantly bullish market. While the past weeks have shown that Bitcoin and other alternative cryptocurrencies are still quite vulnerable to shifting market sentiments, what’s positive to note is that the infamous volatility of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency isn’t as strong as it used to be.

Another interesting trend we saw over the past weeks is that Bitcoin proved to be less vulnerable to big price swings than other altcoins. In the past, alternative cryptocurrencies like Ethereum followed Bitcoin’s trends closely, dropping down hard when Bitcoin dropped and rising up again when Bitcoin did. But things seemed to be changing, as Investopedia noted, and Bitcoin is suffering less damage than other coins.

According to the finance portal, this could be due to a number of reasons, the key being that Bitcoin is seen as a more stable alternative to altcoins. As the news of another ETF approval delay drove investors to sell altcoins faster, Bitcoin was less severely hit than other cryptocurrencies. This, it is believed, is due to Bitcoin still being the first asset people turn to in the eyes of a financial crisis, like it has been recently during some of Turkey’s biggest financial struggles.

Bitcoin’s Market Cap Grows

During the last week since our last update, Bitcoin’s price drew another wavy pattern on the charts, dropping down to a weekly low point of $6,276.41 after midnight on Thursday and climbing back to a peak of $6,787.28 early today with several price swings in-between.

Throughout this time, the 24-hour trading volume mostly stayed over $4.5 billion, although drops to $3.5 billion were also noted. Since morning, the volume has been dropping again and is currently at $4.2 billion. The market cap, on the other hand, has slightly increased when compared to last week thanks to the price boost and is currently at $115 billion.

Our technical analysis shows that the market is still bullish, with 10 out of 12 oscillators and 11 out of 12 moving averages showing green, confirming buyers dominate the markets. The SMA 100 is still over the SMA 200, although with a narrow gap, indicating there’s less resistance to the upside. The chart patterns confirm that a new support is forming around the current range that could lead to a break towards $7,500 should bulls keep driving the market upwards.

“Stablecoins” – a New Alternative to Cryptocurrencies?

Driven by the volatile swings of the world’s leading cryptocurrencies, a number of cryptocurrency start-ups are looking for alternative coins that will be pegged to stable fiat currencies which they are calling “stablecoins”, the BBC reports. Thus far, several contenders have emerged in the crypto industry and more are expected to appear in the following years.

Tether, the cryptocurrency that’s reportedly backed up by a US dollar reserve, is the leader of this “stablecoin” pack, holding 90% of this emerging market. But Tether’s idea has led others to develop new similar coins, like the one from the Circle financial company. Dubbed the USD coin, Circle’s soon-to-be-launched token will reportedly allow users to pay for services on cryptocurrency networks, launch smart contracts, and exchange their assets back to fiat money during any given time.

Yet another contender is StableUSD – a coin being developed by the Stably company from Vancouver which is also reportedly pegged to the US dollar. According to the company founder, Kory Hoang, the “stablecoin” market can provide “huge opportunities”, particularly in countries where the local currencies are unstable.